/ Poetry /
Even within the room,
in shadow, you must turn
from that effulgence, and the voice precludes doubt.
“If you come out of there,”
the angel says, “we will embrace you
within the limits of your comfort zone
and find you something meaningful to be.
Youth and strength will return, knowledge descend.”
Every fiber of your being
(as the saying goes) yearns, but you continue
to sit. Though the voice wasn’t loud,
echoes fade. The chair
seems to have hewn itself spontaneously
into the most gracious modern form.
Likewise your bed, desk,
the table with a pitcher full
– what would you have? – of flowers.
It is a kind of guesthouse.
Light dwindles to the best autumnal normal.
Everything must be made (you think)
from a different kind of subatomic particle.
Think: Why must skepticism
always be viewed as negative?
Might it not also create?
Mistrust, an assumption of futility
mutate into their own sort
of wonder? Eventually, when you’re sure
the being or beings outside are gone
and that no one will come, you get up.
Air of an island.
You walk downhill past cacti
towards where the shore must be, gaze out
on what seem to be clouds but aren’t.